"Youthful Splendor"

It's pretty clear from this that I'm learning more and more about doing CG artwork in this first finished work of 2001. But anyway, this is another drawing of Garrod, actually based on a picture of Heero in one of my Gundam Wing posters that was also the basis for my "Whisper of a Summer's Breeze" picture in the Wing section, and much better than that drawing too. This combines the basic cel-style shading I first learned to do with several of my other drawings with some of the techniques I used in "Little Boy Lost" to create a more 3-dimensional feel, and I'm very pleased with the end result of this combination. (The background is just a picture that came with my graphics program, but it went so well with the drawing itself that I had to use it.) The title first came to me as I was first working on the outline, because what I had at that point made Garrod look rather youthful and innocent. So far, this is definitely my best cel-style CG, and probably one of my best anime drawings overall. I find that the style I drew this in looks so close to the original character design that one could easily mistake this for an official picture when it really isn't. And everyone else seems to agree with me too; it peaked at the top spot in Gundam.com's fan art gallery and spent a lot of time in the top 25 after that. Hmm, is there more of a demand for GX fan art than I think?